


Parole 2: La Perla Negra

by GloriaMundi



Series: Parole [3]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: C17, Gen, Historical, POV First Person, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-24
Updated: 2006-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi





	Parole 2: La Perla Negra

**II: La Perla Negra**

I haven't been more than a day on land, but it feels like homecoming to be at sea again. The days are short, this far north, and it's nearly sunset (though the sun's hidden behind a barrage of hard white clouds) before I reach the _Black Pearl_.

Last time I came aboard this ship, I was helped up the accommodation ladder, the Captain all solicitous, clasping my arthritic hands and steadying me into the sway of the deck. This time, I manage alone. The _Pearl_'s high-sterned, but I go slowly and secretly, easily finding footholds on the ornate scrollwork.

As though he's been drawn there by some scent or premonition, Captain Jack Sparrow stands alone on the poop-deck, glass to his eye, staring back at the southern horizon where Corunna lies. No doubt he's looking for signs of pursuit, and congratulating himself on finding none.

I swing myself over the taffrail, careful not to make a sound. There are men in the rigging, working the sails handily, but none on the spray-slick black deck. No one to welcome me aboard.

"Captain Sparrow."  

"Aaargh," says Jack Sparrow, convulsing like a man with a palsy, and almost dropping his fine glass into the _Pearl_'s wake. Then, rallying, "Delightful to see you again, Elizabeth. _Love_ the hair-do."

I've lost my cap somewhere between shore and ship, and my hair's draggled over my shoulders, dripping wet and green as samphire. I shan't give him the satisfaction of a response.

"You're looking well, Jack," I observe instead. In this changing world, one thing has stayed the same, and it's Captain Jack Sparrow. From the beads in his hair to the boots on his feet, he's the spitting image of the man I remember from the dock at Port Royal, so many years ago.

"So are you," says Jack, smiling -- baring his teeth at me. Perhaps there's more gold than before, but I've always suspected it's affectation, not necessity. "Doesn't time fly, eh? Why, it hardly seems like a hundred years since I last had the pleasure of your company."

"It's not," I snap. "Not that _you_ care." And I stare him down haughtily.

"You doomed me, love, and I doomed you," says Jack, his smile sharpening and his eyes hard as steel. "I do believe we're square."

"Square?" I exclaim. "Oh, no, Captain Sparrow, I don't think so. You barely spent fifty _days_ in Purgatory, but I was --"

Jack holds up his hand, bidding me to silence. I glare at him. None of the _Pearl_'s crew are within earshot, and I'd hoped to converse with him in some privacy. The poop-deck is the Captain's exclusive territory, after all, even on a pirate ship. But now I can hear quick footsteps, booted heels. Here comes some busy fellow, hurrying aft to see who's keeping his Captain company.

"Jack, what -- oh."

'Oh', indeed.

The last time I saw James Norrington, he was more than half of the sea: gilled and tentacled and blue-lipped, with his Admiral's hat shapeless on his head and his skin white as any fortnight-drowned corpse. His eyes, sea-coloured, are the only things about him that have stayed the same. He's staring at me as I must have stared at him on the deck of the _Dutchman_ that night, when I finally realised what my life was worth to Jack Sparrow.

"Admiral Norrington," I say, pleased to retain control of my voice. I'm as coolly civil as I ever was in Port Royal, when this man was courting me. That's a world away, an aeon ago.  None of us are the same people that we were then. Excepting, apparently, Jack Sparrow.

"It hasn't been a century," says Norrington brusquely. "How did you escape?"

"Piracy's done nothing for your manners," I note. "As a matter of fact, I didn't escape. Nor," I add, to Jack, "was I rescued, or bartered. The Captain granted me parole."

"Time off for good behaviour, no doubt," says Jack, hands clasped in that obsequious way of his. "Always knew you'd warm to Barbossa, Elizabeth, given your taste for  piracy."

"I was cured of that taste a long time ago," I retort, trying not to think of the particular behaviour that won me my freedom. "Here on this very deck, in fact."

I'd hoped to sting Jack with my words, but he's still smiling at me. "Funny you should mention that," he says. "We have so much in common."

"I don't -" I begin, but then, sudden and sooner than I'd expected, there's that familiar pull at my heart. Once, when I knew nothing, I thought it meant love, or desire, or a yearning for freedom. Now I know it's only the tide turning, the ocean shifting 'round me. Jack's watching me: Jack's _seeing_ me, seeing me sigh as everything changes direction and flows another way. He feels it too.

James Norrington flicks a puzzled glance at me, then at Jack. "I'm glad you're alive," he says to me, with the air of a man striving to turn the conversation to more civilised avenues.

I turn my cold gaze on him, but he's sincere. He's even smiling at me, that brilliant slow smile that I -- another me -- fell in love with, long ago. His mouth is red once more, like fruit.

"But " begins Norrington. I'm fascinated by the symmetry of his face, his teeth. It's hard to concentrate on what he's saying. "Forgive me, Elizabeth, but why are you here?"

Jack Sparrow's doubtless answered that question a hundred times over, in the handful of minutes since I came back out of the sea. Vengeance. A debt to settle. A simple "Time's up, Jack." He's edging away. Running away.

"I have nowhere else to go," I say at last. It's the truth, or _a_ truth. I've learnt the hard way that there are more truths than just mine.

Jack brightens, as I knew he would, at this admission.

"As the Captain of the _Black Pearl_," he says expansively, stepping between us, "I do believe it's my business to determine whether persons of your kind are permitted on board."

"My kind, Captain Sparrow?" I won't play Jack's games. "What kind is that? Women? Bad luck on a ship, I'm told. People you've  kissed?" I flick a glance at James Norrington, but he's giving nothing away. "Or do you mean people you've betrayed?"

"Now that you mention it, m' crew encompasses all of the aforementioned," says Jack, his smile warm and his eyes cold. "And, under serendipitous circumstances, I might even find myself inclined to hire someone who'd betrayed _me_." He pauses, to make sure I've understood his unsubtlety. "What I actually had in mind  Lizzie  was persons of a _thalassic_ nature."

"You took _him_ aboard," I accuse him, waving a hand at Norrington.

"I did better than that, as it happens," says Jack. "I took him ashore."

"Jack," says Norrington. It's a warning.

"I've been ashore since I left the _Dutchman_," I say. "I didn't care for it."

"What can I say, love? That was France."

"Jack," says Norrington: then, stepping up to me, "Elizabeth, you can still be saved."

"Saved?" I cry. There's a note of madness in my voice, and an undercurrent of something more vicious. "You've had little enough thought of saving me 'til now, either of you!"

"You saved yourself, darlin'," says Jack Sparrow. I've never heard an endearment less sincere, and that's saying something after fifty years of dining nightly with Captain Barbossa.

"I did," I say defiantly, chin up. "And I don't recall you proposing to do anything more for me."

"Ah, but what if I told you that you could be yourself again?" says Jack, all honey now. He smiles that golden smile at me.

I smile back, sharp shark-teeth, and he flinches.

"Be myself, Jack?" I enquire, as though it doesn't matter. As though I miss the woman I once was. "Isn't it a bit late for that?"

"Consider, if you will, your former fiancé," says Jack, gesturing broadly at James Norrington, who rolls his eyes. "Looking well, isn't he? And considerably less ... pelagically inclined than when last you met, eh?"

Norrington says nothing. He stares at me gravely, and I know what he's seeing: a phantastical creature, no more than half-human, green-haired and slit-gilled, salt in her veins and a cold phosphorescence in her heart. Does he see, beneath the coral and the kelp, the Elizabeth Swann he once wished to marry? Does he think he can bring her back?

I don't understand why there's warmth in his gaze. A warmth that I haven't seen in any man's eyes -- certainly not Barbossa's, despite his constant attempts at seduction -- these fifty years and more. And Jack's looking at me ... Jack's looking at me as if we're equals, the way he did on this very deck when we first kissed. (Where we last kissed.) Looking at me as if we're square.

"What are you suggesting?" I ask them. I don't know who'll answer, Jack or James. I don't care. They owe me a life.

To the south, the horizon is empty. We've reached the open sea.

 


End file.
